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Tom Szaky didn't even try to get his product--a worm excrement
fertilizer packed in a recycled bottle--into small retailers when
he started TerraCycle six years ago. Instead, he reached as high
as he could: Wal-Mart. "If I want to be big and do it quickly,
the best way … is to work with the world's biggest companies," he
says. "They can accelerate your cycle much more quickly than any
other company can."

The Trenton, N.J.-based company's first big partnership with
Wal-Mart in Canada was just the start of what has become a $14
million business. TerraCycle now gathers unrecyclable trash and
converts it into products and packaging for such big brands as
Kraft, Pepsi and Mars. Last year, corporate partners spent $45
million on TerraCycle-related marketing--far more than Szaky
could have ever done alone.

But breaking in with big companies is no easy feat. For Szaky, it
took lots of research, persistence and trial and error. "The
biggest mistake small companies make is they don't do enough
homework," says Brant Slade, co-author of Think BIG!: An
Entrepreneur's Guide to Partnering With Large Companies (Course
Technology PTR, 2009). "They think … more from the small business
point of view as opposed to thinking from the large business
point of view."

Here's a checklist to help your small business prepare to partner
with big brands:

1. Be unique. Make sure your business pitch is
carefully thought out and offers value to your potential partner.
After Robin Thurston co-founded MapMyFITNESS.com, an Austin,
Texas-based fitness social network that
offers online routes, training and group activities, he and his
partner realized they had developed a geo-location technology
that bigger companies wanting online fitness tools and access to
a social network could use. With their first corporate partner,
Cadbury's Accelorade sports drink, they collaborated on a web
interface enabling users on their site to map and share workouts.
"You have to have something that is clearly valuable to that big
brand that they might not want to spend the time investing in or
doing," Thurston says. Now, the company also builds web platforms
and mobile
phone apps for brands like NBC Sports, Humana and Skechers, whose
customers can opt into the MapMyFITNESS social network.

2. Remain persistent. Although Szaky had the
worm-excrement-in-a-recycled-bottle market cornered, getting that
first deal with Wal-Mart in 2005 still required persistence.
After scouring LinkedIn and alumni networks to find the right
contact, Szaky called Wal-Mart 10 times a day, every day for
three weeks until he finally got through and set up a meeting.
Big companies field lots of requests, so persistence is a must.
"There are some brands we are working with today that literally
were five-year conversations," Thurston says.

3. Think big. You have to think like a big
brand to partner with one. For MapMyFITNESS, that means
developing large-scale projects. "A big brand doesn't want to
talk about a $10,000 project," Thurston says. "They want to talk
in seven figures and really big user numbers." For example,
Thurston and his partner proposed that big companies give away
their product with subscriptions to the MapMyFITNESS website. The
size of their user base--nearly seven million today--was large
enough to interest brands like Procter & Gamble's Febreze.

4. Plan for fast growth. If you're growing too
quickly to keep up with demand, you'll lose money--and probably
your partner. Szaky learned that lesson through experience. "The
more we grew, the more we lost," he says. While TerraCycle's
sales reached $6.6 million in 2008, it had a net loss of $4.5
million. The next year, Szaky began developing agreements with
companies to handle production for him. Today, 40 companies make
and sell TerraCycle products for major retailers and TerraCycle
turned a profit of $100,000 in the last year.

Polka Dog Bakery, a Boston-based dog treat maker slated to expand
into 1,763 Target stores this May, let the retailer oversee
production and distribution in order to make the partnership
feasible. "It would have been too much for us to expand at that
capacity," says cofounder Robert Van Sickle of his 11-person
company.

5. Prepare for scrutiny. Make sure your
financial and legal affairs are in order. Since TerraCycle works
with multinational companies, the company gets audited every two
months. After failing the first few audits in his early
partnerships, Szaky realized he needed to focus more on
developing proper procedures. "If you are going to go down the
path of working in big businesses, having your house in order is
critical," he says. "You are going to get the growth but you are
also going to get a lot more scrutiny."

6. Build on existing partnerships. Don't
rush to find the next partner once you successfully link up with
a big company. MapMyFITNESS gets a lot of new business from
expanding existing partnerships, Thurston says. Companies are
often more willing to consider developing a licensing
partnership, for example, if they're already buying advertising
on your website. "Too many entrepreneurs chase after the next
client instead of recognizing the current client could mean a lot
more revenue for them if they simply explore other revenue
channels," Thurston says. Partnerships now account for a third of
his company's total revenue.